


Time of the Season

by phoebesmum



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Angst, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 22:49:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/phoebesmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan doesn't <i>do</i> Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time of the Season

**Author's Note:**

> Written December 2004.

"So, what are you doing for the holidays?" Casey asked and, when Dan only looked more than usually blank, he clarified, "For Christmas?"

"Oh," Dan said. Thought for a moment. Shrugged. "Mostly?" he said. "Mostly just being Jewish. Same as every year."

Casey seemed taken aback, but recovered quickly. "I knew that," he said, although Dan had the distinct impression that, in fact, he hadn't. "I just wondered – don't you do anything at all?"

Dan sighed, and rolled his eyes. "Yes," he said, with a certain bite, "We celebrate 2,000 years of dispossession and persecution." But you couldn't be unkind to floppy-haired, badly-dressed, super-geek Casey, who, for whatever reason, had apparently decided that Dan was his new best friend; it was like kicking a puppy. So he smiled, to soften it, and added, "Truthfully? Yeah, when we were kids, and the stores were full of Christmas junk – we didn't have a tree or anything, but my parents let us go to parties, visit Santa Claus – stuff like that. Kid stuff." He smiled, a sharp, acquisitive smile. "Get presents. Never say no to anything free."

"You don't do anything nowadays?"

"We're not kids now," Dan said. "And we have our own traditions."

Casey nodded wisely. "Chanukah," he said. He sounded immensely proud of himself for knowing the word; it was, Dan thought, too much to expect him to be able to pronounce it, too.

Dan painted on another smile and let Casey believe whatever he liked. Yes, there was Chanukah. But nowadays all the holiday tradition meant to him was going back to an empty apartment at the end of the day. Phoning his parents. Pretending that he didn't know that they were only pretending to be happy to hear from him.

Pretending that the call they were really waiting for was not the one that would never come again.

Dan didn't go home for the holidays any more. Because _home_, as he had known it, had ceased to exist one grey September morning, two years before.

And for that, there was no one to blame but himself.

***


End file.
